Tuesday, September 26

2006-09-26 07:58

Today is Tuesday, September 26, the 269th day of 2006. There are 96 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

1580 - Francis Drake brings his ship, the Golden Hind, laden with gold and spices into Plymouth harbour, Massachusetts, becoming the first captain to circumnavigate the globe.

1679 - Danes give up their claim to what is now southern Sweden by the Treaty of Lund.

1687 - Venetian artillery scores a direct hit on the Parthenon in Athens, used by the Turks as a powder magazine. The explosion seriously damages the temple.

1777 - British troops occupy Philadelphia during the American Revolution.

1789 - Thomas Jefferson is appointed America's first secretary of state and John Jay, the first chief justice of the United States.

1815 - Anti-liberal Holy Alliance is formed between Austria, Russia and Prussia to maintain Vienna Settlement, which revised map of Europe.

1850 - France restricts press freedom.

1907 - New Zealand becomes a self-governing dominion within British Commonwealth.

1918 - Allies launch offensive that eventually breaks Germany's Hindenburg Line in World War 1.

1945 - The government re-imposes on Argentina a state of siege, arresting hundreds of people who have shown opposition to the regime.

1950 - United Nations forces recapture Seoul, capital of South Korea.

1954 - An estimated 1 168 people die when the ferryboat Toya Maru capsises off Hokkaido Island, near Japan.

1962 - Imam Badr is driven from power in Yemen, ending a more than 1 000-year dynasty.

1965 - Former President Juan Bosch returns to Dominican Republic from exile in Puerto Rico. His homecoming is marred by shooting outbreaks.

1969 - Leftist military junta overthrows the government of Bolivia.

1970 - Jordan's King Hussein names new government to placate critics who accused him of plotting to liquidate Palestinian guerrillas in his country.

1976 - Leaders of five black African nations decline to accept a plan presented by Rhodesia's Prime Minister Ian Smith to achieve black majority rule in Rhodesia.

1980 - The Cuban government abruptly closes Mariel Harbour, ending the freedom flotilla of Cuban refugees into the US that began the previous April.

1983 - Australia II wins America's Cup yachting series off Newport, Rhode Island, the first US loss in 132 years.

1984 - Britain and China initial agreement that will return Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997.

1989 - Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze tells UN General Assembly that Moscow will join the US in reducing or destroying all chemical weapons.

1992 - South African President FW de Klerk and African National Congress President Nelson Mandela end a four-month stalemate over political violence and the structure of a post-apartheid government.

1997 - Earthquakes in central Italy kill 11 people and cause the collapse of the Basilica of St Francis of Assissi.

1998 - Vladimir Meciar's party loses in Slovakian parliamentary elections, forcing a change of the government in Central Europe's bastion of authoritarianism.

1999 - Explosions rip through a busy shopping area in the central Mexican city of Celaya, killing 61 people and injuring more than 300 others.

2001 - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres meet at Gaza International Airport in the Gaza Strip to move forward with measures for Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire.

2002 - An ocean ferry owned and operated by Senegal capsises off the coast of Gambia in the Atlantic Ocean, en route to the Senegalese capital, Dakar. About 1 034 people perish and 64 are rescued.

2003 - The Katsina State Sharia Court of Appeals overturns the conviction of Amina Lawal, who had been sentenced to death by stoning under Islamic law after she was accused of having a child out of wedlock.

2004 - Armed militiamen have surged into a border area near a western village, where some of the first Darfur refugees attempting to return to their raided homes headed, raising further concern about how quickly 1.4 million displaced Sudanese will be able to return home.

2005 - The Irish Republican Army announces it has fully disarmed, a breakthrough verified by international weapons inspectors who say they watched the secret disarmament.

Some hail the move as lifting the last obstacle to peace in the region, but others demand proof.

Today's Birthdays: Moses Mendelssohn, German philosopher (1729-1786); Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, Russian physiologist and Nobel laureate (1849-1936); Thomas Stearns Eliot, British writer and Nobel laureate (1888-1965); Martin Heidegger, German philosopher (1889-1976); Pope Paul VI (Giovanni Montini) (1897-1978); George Gershwin, US songwriter (1898-1937); Jack LaLanne, US fitness expert (1914).

Thought For Today: As in the physical world, so in the spiritual world, pain does not last forever - Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand-born author (1888-1923).

- AP